Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

White Azaleas in Magnolia Gardens

Beatrice Ravenel

YOUR images in water! Sea-shell gray

And iridescence; like the endless spawn

Of pale sea-jellies on a moonless night—

A milky way that glamours out of sight—

Something of sea and something of the sky.

Drawn from the earth as blossoming dreams are drawn,

Most strange are you in this, that dreams alight and fly,

But you dream on all your translucent day.

Sweeps of divinest nothingness, abyss

Of beauty, you are the stirred, subconscious place

Of flowers, you are the rathe and virgin mood

Of young azaleas.
Where heaped branches brood

Like bathers, water-girdled to the hips,

Like Undines, every blossom turns her face

Groping above the water, with her parted, winged, insatiable lips,

Each for her soul and its white mysteries.